Tu Fui Ego Eris
by i-prefer-the-term-antihero
Summary: "As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so shall you be." Poetic prose from the Ancient Fuelweaver/King.


**Notes**

I was watching Zeklo's lore/theory videos and I thought my brain might explode if I didn't do something with all the information, so this happened! Aside from the actual quotes from the Ancient Fuelweaver (the bolded parts), I think most of the ideas behind this fic come from his video about the murals in the Ancient Ruins.

* * *

 **How we've fallen.**

It was not enough. The earth and the sky were not enough. Not enough, and full of storms and winters.

So we went beneath the ground, where the only thing to fear falling from the sky was the earth.

When there were no stones left, we mined our own nightmares.

I think we forgot what light looked like.

"King," "reign," even "love," became empty letters in our infected plane. I thought I knew what those strings of symbols were, what they meant, but some lightning-struck, honeyed words, and a spiked staff, told me otherwise. And my heart turned black.

We are so far beneath the flowers.

I was not always a shadow. Neither were my people. But we consorted with nightmares, until nightmares we became. No light. No life. Left.

I promise you, there is a right. Do not pretend, do not tell your soul, otherwise. And **I was wrong.**

Hard shells on our backs, into soft black, into nothing at all.

We lost our hands and faces…I called back their hands and faces...

 **I will make you understand.**

It is not an easy fate. To be a king, then a prisoner. It would be grim indeed, to be a prisoner in a foreign land. It is, I think, worse yet to be a prisoner in your own land, chained to your head; still a king, still on the throne, still with the power—more of it perhaps—but the throne blooms into thorns beneath your feet, beneath your reign, beneath your brain, in your tattered city, beneath the ground. The nightmare throne, where there is no such thing as ransom. Where the hands clasping yours belong not to your queen, but the demons that talked you into this current plight—even if they're _your_ demons, and your own mind made them.

Cannot leave. Cannot die. _Cannot see **Metheus** again_. Watch, and wait, with all that power in your grasp. The only choice is to go mad with it. The only choices are _wrong_ , and _wrong_ , and _wrong_. You don't make them because you think they're, in any way, right. Not for any righteous reason; not glory, nor even show of strength, not to save someone, not even yourself. Not for any reason at all. Just boredom. Just waiting. Just to fill the nothing. Because sometimes you'd rather have something, than nothing at all. Even if it's terrible, cruel—the motives of a mad creature, mad king, ruler over this insanity, and ruled by it all the same—to cause them this pain, and this much, at least it's better than hollow wind, and taunting memories. It is a rare affliction, I do not expect you to understand it (you, with your head full of needs and wants, and your blood still red…you are so very lucky) but sometimes you'd rather have nightmares than no dreams at all.

Or at least watch them play out for someone else.

You forget the importance of dreams until nightmares are all that is left.

 **You will be unraveled. You will rip apart at the seams**.

And watch them die. No pleasure in their pain, though there may have been a sick part of it all at first. Pure jealousy. You start to long for horrible things. And when they cry _'please, I don't want to die!'_ before they starve, before the hound's tooth is shoved through their heart, before the darkness snatches their light away, and with it their life, you want nothing more than to take their place. When you know this to your core, then you will know why Death itself is pure mercy.

So you make them come back. You refuse to give them that mercy. It was not granted you, why should it be granted them? Revive, resurrect, just to watch them die over and over again, feeling a pang like addiction in the back of your heart. Mercy or torture, all depends on the voice you use to say the words. All depends on if you're watching the scene from before, or beyond, the grave, or somewhere in between.

Or upon the nightmare throne.

 **You will not suffer**. You have not known suffering.

It is not an easy fate. To be a blackened heart dropped by the shadow of a machine you once created. Our clockwork, still ticking, fighting a fight they no longer remember. To be thrust into a corpse, not your own, to be made to fight too—like you're the toy, and not the once-king—and, at last receive the drug you crave, and carved: death. To slumber, only to come back again, because someone else upon the throne named it so.

 **How long have I slumbered?**

Full of hate and rage and regret. I remember it all. Unlike you, who seem to have forgotten your past, as the world has forgotten mine.

 **You will fall, as we did.**

Steal our gems, break down our walls, steal our hearts, take our souls. It doesn't frighten we, who are shadows. But the moment you hold dreams-gone-awry in the palm of your hand, I feel a phantom stir in a heart-gone-wrong, that reminds me of something I used to call fear. I know you took the idea from us—this notion that bad dreams can fuel things—but, like a disease, we caught it from **them**. Knowledge may be power, but when fueled by nightmares, when wielded by **them** , power and knowledge are less than worthless; they are a negative.

 **They** will not show you mercy. **They are coming. It cannot be stopped**. You know not what the gateway holds.

Broken gateways of forgotten realms (our threadbare world, our listless skies) may seem harmless, but they will arouse something inside you called curiosity. _Find the key, steal it from the Ancient Guardian_. Just to see what it does. _Revive the king_. Just to win the fight. Curiosity may be more lethal, more venomous, than you bargain for, with more bite to it than knowledge or power.

You saw an entire civilization built on nightmares and you thought, _why not us too?_ Did your mind (still working, still with the dreams) ever wonder if maybe the blackened tears, and the reddened floorboards, were more than just an eerie exhibition, but a warning? That maybe it was the past, begging you turn away? Then you gave those frayed yesterdays my voice. And still, you refuse to listen.

 **I must do this. For your sake.**

I am not some animal to kill for sport, or meat, or treasure in my heart's beat. Don't mistake me for a beast, or a boss. I am not merely a shadow. I once weaved the fuel as you do; weaved the tale of my own demise into carpets, and tapestries. **My city...in tatters... this world… threadbare.**

I have fought very hard to remain more than merely a shadow, and will not be reduced to the absence of light now. Cast into this fight, the light, but I have decided to be more. It may be hard to imagine, but this is about more than blood, and victory.

 **I will save you.**

I would have nothing worth fighting for. If it weren't for you. New creatures. Humans, as you are called.

Maxwell. The new king. _'Amazing'_. Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps no creature can be amazing enthroned in nightmares. With a flair for magic all-too-real, with too much knowledge, and too much power, you would succumb, far too fast.

This was another important piece I learned about humanity: darkness has a way with you.

Willow. The fire, without the spark. There is always something to burn, child, and sometimes you're the only thing left. Best not reach the point where you'll burn it all, with yourself in those flames too. Or when it is yourself you wish to burn, but your heart will not even char.

Wolfgang. the strongman. Too little brain, and a heart too soft. Afraid of the cold and the dark. What good is a strongman with a weakened heart? But, then again, what good is a creature with a callous heart, and the strength to follow the threats through? Perhaps it's for the best that you were made to be kind.

Wendy. The girl, and the ghost. The one who knows death is inevitable, but how, here, though death runs rampant, life is far more impervious to being overthrown. The one who knows there is more to life than curiosity. But weakness can go a long way, and the things that haunt you may protect you now, but one day they may turn around, with reddened glaze. Maybe one day you'll remember how memories can come alive, and why they are called ghosts.

WX-78. Invention, not man. Metal, not flesh. I wonder, does a thing like you have a soul? I wonder, when the lightning strikes, do you feel its burn, its warm glow? Or are these strings just numbers tied to your wires? If I tried to talk to the sense in you, would there be any sense in you to talk to? When you tell the living things their inadequacy, I must admit, you have your points. But I wonder if it means anything to you, if those words are yours, or if they are numbers your maker wrote into you. Maybe that's all any of us are, and the question was pointless from the beginning.

Wickerbottom. The librarian. The library. The reader. The writer. The stuck-in-her-ways. Do you see how knowledge can only get you so far? That your hands may not be the right ones to wield it? Though, there may be no one to wield it right; too much of knowledge should be left on the forest floor. Still, perhaps it is better to know, than to wander in the dark. But when you choose ignorance for the sake of curiosity, for the sake of more knowledge, what good is the knowledge you had in the first place?

Woodie. Now there's an interesting sight. The lumberjack, with the axe who talks like a lady, and a condition of the moon that is laughable at best, and pathetic at worst. Still, though your story may sound as such, you are not the least sane of the bunch.

Wes. The silent. The mime. Not to be confused with the actor. Only there to make things worse for the ones behind the strings. Only there to make balloons and pop them, and not say a word, and try your very best to be a living thing, and fail from the beginning.

We are all tied to strings, waiting to hit the sky, to fall back down, or pop apart somewhere in the middle.

Wigfrid. Here's the actor. The one to take things just a little bit too far. If the acting kills you dear, if it gives you more reason to fear, and less fear to draw from, then perhaps its best to live in the real world.

Or perhaps this world was never real in the first place.

Webber. The spider-boy, the one who understands perhaps more than the rest give him credit for. The child, with the face of a monster. And if only the rest of you understood, maybe you'd say _poor, poor thing_ , until your lips bleed with pity. _You poor, poor boy, you should not go into the dark_. Should not go into the light. Sometimes the grown ups are more childish than the young. And I wish they listened to you.

The darkness' sister. With rough hands, and a mind to mend machines and metal, but with no less darkness in her than the sister herself.

And at last Wilson. The scientist. The comedian. The perfect balance. Nothing too weak, nothing too strong. But people want strength, and will ignore the weakness for it sake. They don't want normal—even if you're a little bit mad, and your story, a little bit sad, they may choose someone with a little more flash, a little more to be had.

In the end, that is the moral to my sad little tale—my bedtime story of the ticking clock and nightmare hands: Science, with a dash of madness, and magic; mind, with a dash of heart; will kill us, or save us all. And maybe you—the first, the most logic-bound, and perhaps maddest of us, were the protagonist after all, and it is your hands, your lips, your brain, your heart, that will seal our fates.

You are more like me than either of us might care to admit.

I know your tale too; how science failed you, and how those demon-hands reached out to grab your wrists, your heart, to chain your mind to the nightmares too. But unlike for me, or Maxwell, somehow you were shown mercy. All of you, brought together, to defeat me, and enter **their** world. You may not be the king, that may not be your rule. So my question is far more simple: if science and magic destroyed you once, twice, who will you turn to in the end? Will you fall back to the lightning's warm glimmer, or will you dare to refuse the nightmares that call from below?

This is the reason I am still willing to fight; you. All of you.

The future. The fight. The guilty-of-theft. The curious. The cold. The only thing left.

 **I will save you.**

The gate is not what you think. And even if where it leads may seem harmless, of little consequence, at first, **they** are still there, waiting. **They are unfathomable.** I know you think you can reset ruins, because the things you mine beneath the ground, in the nightmares' realm, are the most valuable, but they are ruins for a reason, and restarting will not make them, make me, whole again.

Don't open the gate. Don't restart. Don't try it, but don't lose heart. I will not protest to death, if it means you will understand, and leave the broken parts.

Don't…

...Don't…

...(Don't)...

 **...Y-yy...**

 ** _You made your choice._**


End file.
